For regulatory agencies, pesticide residues in food do not pose a risk to health. But a body of scientific work recently, on the effects of mixtures of molecules and chronic exposures to low doses, suggests that the risks posed by traces of pesticides are, on the contrary, very real for the consumer.
An epidemiological study French, published Monday, October 22 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, is the first to point out such risks in the general population, in the case of cancer.
It indicates that the biggest consumers of food from organic farming have a risk of cancer is reduced by 25 %, compared to those who consume the least. “To explain these results, the hypothesis of the presence of residues of synthetic pesticides more frequently and at higher doses in foods derived from conventional agriculture compared to organic food is the more likely,” says Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot, senior researcher (Institut national de la recherche agronomique, INRA) in the research team in nutritional epidemiology (Inserm, INRA, university Paris-XIII) and a co-author of this work.
In fact, the types of cancer whose risk is most reduced among consumers that foods labeled ” AB ” are also associated with exposures of farmers to pesticides.
Demonstration new
Led by Julia Baudry and Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot, the authors exploited the data of a large cohort, the so-called NutriNet, nearly 70,000 volunteers followed between 2009 and 2016. They were divided into four groups, the individuals, the ranking of the largest consumers of bio (approximately 50 % of their diet), those who consume only occasionally, or never.
During the seven years of follow-up, 1 340 new cases of cancer were registered ;…
